Product Description

'...in suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting up his wife, she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty.' Northanger Abbey is about the misadventures of Catherine Morland, young, ingenuous, and mettlesome, and an indefatigable reader of gothic novels. Their romantic excess and dark overstatement feed her imagination, as tyrannical fathers and diabolical villains work their evil on forlorn heroines in isolated settings. What could be more remote from the uneventful securities of life in the midland counties of England? Yet as Austen brilliantly contrasts fiction with reality, ordinary life takes a more sinister turn, and edginess and circumspection are reaffirmed alongside comedy and literary burlesque. Also including Austen's other short fictions, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon, this valuable new edition examines the ambitious and innovative works with which she inaugurated as well as closed her career.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #242342 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Customer Reviews

Northanger Abbey
I love Jane Austen books and have read them all several times, and this would be my favourite if Pride and Prejudice wasn't so good! Being one of Austen's earliest novels (I think the first written but not published) its tone is different to the others. The narrator has a larger role, and is responsible for more of the humour, whereas in P&P for example, the humour is from the subtle irony and characters. However, in Northanger there are some wonderful lines in from the narrator, and while I read it I had my family asking me what was so funny! Although it is a gothic parody, it is really subtle. TV adaptations of this book really annoy me because they don't get that and go too over the top.
Also, this edition contains unfinished Jane Austen novels, which are probably only interesting to fans as they are generally in note form, but they are really interesting to compare to her earlier work. :-)

Northanger Abbey.
I have not read any of the other short stories in this book so far.
But as for Northanger Abbey? That gets a huge yawn from me. Aside from a few very important observations about women and literature and the humour of Austins sarcasm, the story itself fails to captivate and offers little substance. In short my recollection of it is like listening to a bit of gossip. If you are a die hard Austin fan then do read it but if not thyen this would only drive you still further away.